It started, as many great companies do, with a failed idea. Akash Raju, Anuj Mehta, and Kushal Negi met at Purdue University and launched their first startup in 2020 - a venture doing Airbnb product placements. It got into Y Combinator. It did not find product-market fit.
What it did find, unexpectedly, was a window into the back offices of consumer brands. And what they saw there was chaos. Finance teams buried in spreadsheets. Invoices from KeHE and UNFI that didn't match what had been shipped. Retailers deducting money from settlements for damage claims, short shipments, and pricing errors - some valid, most not - and brands simply writing it off.
"We ultimately felt we lacked product-market fit and decided to hard pivot," Akash Raju, now CEO, later said. The pivot became Glimpse - launched in April 2024 - and the mission was clarified: stop consumer brands from losing up to 5% of their retail revenue to invalid deductions.
Simple mission. Enormous market. And a category that was ripe - because the only tool anyone had been using for decades was a spreadsheet and a prayer.